A man of ice set me aflame
by HollowCrawlSpaceBeatingHearts
Summary: Benjen Stark is freezing to death without her. She is burning alive without him. Their worlds must collide. Benjen s/ OC/ Robb S
1. Burning girl

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Sometimes she thinks of saddling her horse and galloping as fast as she can to the wall. She longs for the strength to break her iron chains of love and run away to the coldest north. She aches to freeze her heart beside his.

_He would have to hold me close if I was dying of cold _

Her broken heart howls such things at the moon on the nights when no sleep will take her. The nights when she beats her pillow for having forgotten the shape of his tousled head. The nights when she wants to strip away her skin with her fingernails for remembering only the ghost of his hands.

_I would grow wings to fly with my crow_.

She knows she should never have loved him. She knows that he swore his nights to watching not to loving. She knows that he swore away all obedience before she ever called upon it. She knows his oath is forever. Yet on the nights when she too sits watch, she almost dares to hope. She half believes the fire in her heart can melt the wall. She cannot stop it burning.

_A man of ice set me a-flame_

She is a woman burning.


	2. Freezing Man

He is a frozen man. The warmth he once held is far away from his high perch on the ice. No sense of duty keeps him safe from the terrifying void he faces without her. He stands on the brink, alone, and he is giddy with cold.

_Without you I am fusing to the ice._

Even without his oath to the Nights Watch he should never have reached for her star. She was the first daughter of a great lord, a line honoured beyond compare. He was the scrappy last pup of his wolf father. What right had he to crave her fire? What right had she to catch him so?

_I have nothing to give but I would give it again and again._

He never regrets the breaking of his oath. To regret the smell of her hair in his nostrils as the morning sun climbed in the sky, or the way she threw back her head and laughed at him, would be unthinkable. She is engraved on his soul. She will endure.

_I wait for your face to burn in the snow_

He is a man watching.


	3. He was the black he wore

She remembers a hall of people. Celebration. The cup of her father raised again and again to the courage of those victorious in Roberts name against tyranny and madness. Such a bustle of visitors, craving advice from the old warlord, seeking respite. They flocked to the bear in his hall. Heroes licking their wounds and her, saucer eyed amongst the din.

She drinks in the radiant beauty of it all as the light pours out to her from candles and bounces back from tankards, dishes, jewels. All the world seems to sparkle but for him. He takes the sparkle of the world and gives back only darkness. He is the black he wears.

She dances like a joyful child, barely stopping, a spinning top on the floor of the great hall. She is at her most beautiful, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright when the man in black appears behind her and clears his throat. He is younger than most of the men there and, though his face is thin, his eyes hold yet the wild promise of youth. She had mistaken his hair for black from distance but up close, with the light of a thousand candles upon it, she sees that it is brown. It even glints with a reddish tinge when he bends his head to hear her give him her name. 'Names have power sir, I will not give mine away to strangers'.

It is probably the wine that makes her say such things but he looks steadily into her eyes before smiling. 'No nurse ever told me such a thing so I will give you mine and let you work your witchcraft with it. I am Benjen Stark, a wolfson of Winterfell'. His eyes never leave hers as he bows lightly to her, his face drawing level for he is taller by a head than she. 'No' she hears herself say and she lifts her glass to him before draining it 'you are a crow'. The man in blacks eyes harden at her words and his thin mouth shows no sign of smiling as he replies 'and yet I cannot fly'. Suddenly she has to escape those eyes that burn in the face of the long legged man so she weaves through the hall and slips out into the warm evening to lean her back against the stone wall. Even when she closes her eyes she sees the grey orbs observe her, she sees herself contained within them.

Imprisoned in the wolf mans eyes.


	4. Amid the spinning gaiety

He and Ned never were good at feasts. He has never been a man for dancing so at this one he sat astride his bench and drank from cups filled by a sea of wine. He insulated himself in wine and Ned's discussion and observed. He had left his bench just that once, when he had caught the reflection of that girl in the great glass, splintered into a thousand dancing pieces. The daughter of the great bear danced like a reed in the wind amid the spinning gaiety and he had sought her out.

Her words still rang in his ears the next morning. He sat alone in the mild air as the sun rose watching the changing colours of the sky. She had spoken in a voice like silver when she refused to give him her name. He chuckles to himself at the memory of her warning: 'the power of names' he mutters and shakes his head. He has seen the wall, he knows what many say lurk beyond its icy bounds but he will not believe in the bear girls words. Still, her face has not left his mind all night. Of her dark head shining in the candlelight, her flushed cheeks as she paused her dancing, her little wrists as her hands clenched at her sides when she walked away.

'Benjen Stark seems to like his mornings'. He does not move at the resurrection of the silver voice but his blood shifts with it. 'I warned him to be careful with his name. He should have listened' she continues and now he turns to see her standing beside him. Her grey dress makes her only half real in the morning light as she steps a bare foot out in the grass. 'What have you done with it then, witch girl?' he asks, turning back again and closing his eyes against the rising sun, stretching his long legs out into the dawn. Her voice is barely above a whisper when she answers 'I have called you with it, bound you to its hearing. You are mine with its utterance. You can call me nothing which binds me. I can melt away from you but you are marked. Trapped by your name'

He creaks an eye open at this strange creature. She holds a knife balanced in her hand and is inspecting the handle with a natural easy knowledge. 'Who taught the witch girl her fear of names?' He asks in his deep voice which is not yet accustomed to the day still bearing the gravel tones of sleep with one eye on the bent dark head. She runs the knife lazily against her skin and brushes a thumb against the edge.

'It is not the names themselves I fear Benjen Stark. It is the cage they bring with them'


	5. The little witch of the gaunt crow

She soon tells him her name and he maddeningly smiles and says 'I knew it all along'. Somehow she is forever running into his lean black figure. He is always just there, leaning against the armoury wall at the same time she visits or reading alone in the great library atop the tower when she goes to look for a book. They converge through accident. They collide.

They converse when they do. He teases her about the tales that she tells him. She asks if he does the morning caw for the Nights Watch recruits. He makes her laugh when his grey eyes glitter with mischief and his thin lips stretch to smile. She is always the one to leave, shaking her head. 'Goodbye gaunt crow' she calls over her shoulder and he laughs his deep laugh and bids goodbye to 'my little witch'. She doesn't even realise to begin with how much she likes hearing him say that.

And so they go for a while, slowly unwrapping the layers they have each built around themselves to discover little secrets that only they will ever know. They start to mould the patterns of their days around their meetings of mocking honesty and she keeps ignoring the voice which tells her she is beginning to fall. But the day will come when she sees she has nothing to break her fall.

The day will come when she will find him in that library and her face will be bathed in tears. She will scream at him with all the fury she has and sob aloud in the quiet of that solemn room. Her silver voice will be bitter in the air between them and he will only quell her anger when he takes her in his arms and kisses her lips to silence. Only when no sound emerges from her will he release her from his arms and cradle her face in his hands and whisper that she must be a witch for she has captured his mind, body and soul. 'How dare you make me love you' she will hiss before she rises and walks from the room.


	6. He is no crow in snowy sheets

That should have been the end. Her angry tears should have shed themselves away and rinsed him from her eyes. His foolish kiss should have died on his lips and her skin faded away from his memory. But it is not like that for them.

He cannot bear her anger, cannot bear alone the love which has grown in his chest to push through his black armour like a flower which grows in the cracks of old strong stone. He passes that night in anguish with her words against his ears when silence falls, her face against his eyelids when they close. He cannot shake her.

So when he awakes to her skin against his he believes he is a man still dreaming. It is not until she whispers his name from the depths of her sleep that he understands the full extent of what he has done. But in bed he wears no black, he is no crow in the snow of his sheets, he can be any lover lost in his mistress's embrace. So he loses himself in her smell and when she wakes he finds a new world amidst the softness of her body. It is the first time he hears those little laughs of pleasure which rise from her throat when he kisses it.

Those little laughs ring round his stone cell when he lies alone in Castle Black.


	7. The oblivious stars

She wakes with his name on her lips. She has been dreaming of his skin

_I need to smell you on myself again. I need to see myself inside your eyes_

Her mouth is eager to utter call out to him, as if she could be his little witch and summon him with those syllables alone. She ghosts her tongue over the shapes of his name and feels his smile upon her again. It is a weak form of magic but it gives him back to her a little, across the aching distance between him.

_I call to my crow but he may not leave his black cage for me_

She wraps her own thin arms around herself and breathes out hot breath onto her cold knees. She knows she is wicked and cruel because she wants him beside her. She wants him to face a penalty of death so that she can keep him to herself. She wants him to dishonour himself and his name for her. To save her from destruction.

_Do you regret me I wonder? _

She prays to the passing raven that he does not and gives her eyes to tears while the stars shine on oblivious above her head.

_**Hello everyone. So do drop me a line to tell me what you think whether good or less so(if you even make it as far as this chapter then I am super chuffed). There is an actual storyline approaching I promise so stick with it if you can bear to! HollowCrawlSpaceBeatingHeart s x**_


	8. His moving soul

He lies forever awake. He is thinking of the way she used to bite at his skin to quiet her cries and giggles and gasps when she lay with him in the blissful days of beginning. Thinking of the way she would murmur his name against his skin when she awoke, always after him, when morning came. The way he would wake to her tangled river of dark hair and savour the last few moments of her sleeping self when not even she could disturb the quiet wall of love he gave her.

_You gave me colour for my dreams_

His life on the Wall has to keep going. So he becomes first ranger and gains the respect and love of those who are his brothers now. That makes it easier on him but he never fully lets her go. She remains sat in the dustier corners of his mind until he cannot occupy his thoughts any more. Then she shakes her head at him and rises to hammer at the walls of his sanity.

_I never knew a medicine so enticing or a disease as beautiful as you_

He does write to her but he never sends the letters. His room is parchment lined with all the words he so wishes he had the strength to say. He knows he should never see her again but as the weeks turn to months he begins to wonder if she has the strength. He is almost certain he does not.

_I cannot live out of your light forever_

The ice cocoons him safe but frozen. She holds his moving soul.


	9. An ice bound heart in ice bound lands

It is not without considerable control that she manages to stay calm at the sound of his name. ' ... the Stark boy then' breaks in upon her reverie as she lifts her head from her lap to look up at him. 'Father?' she breathes as her soul revolts in hope and fear and deep desire. 'You cannot deny that you have not been yourself my dear, I think it is high time you were married and Ned Stark has suggested a match with his son Robb. I don't know if you remember Ned from when he stayed with his brother Benjen some months here but he is a kind man. Your life at Winterfell will be a happy one'. The silence is so loud it howls within her mind. 'it is all arranged my dear' her father looks worried 'you have been so placid that we ... I mean ... You are pleased?'

Heartbeats are the only movement. She looks into her father's face and she remembers why she did not simply run to the wall. She is the bear lords daughter. She is his hope, his only one, it falls to her to hold their honour high. So she smiles back 'I have always thought the Starks honourable men father, and I will not fail you'. Even she is almost convinced by how happy her voice sounds. So she embraces her parents and makes her excuses before calmly walking to the stables and saddling her horse. She leaves the courtyard at a trot. Her pace builds and builds and soon she is flying over the countryside and the wind howling in her ears as she rides drowns out her screams.

She comes to stop when her poor horse can go no further and blindly walks in circles desperately holding her own body tight. She is grasping at the pieces of her broken self. She knows she has no way out and yet her whole body is wrenching at her, begging her to find another way. How can she live in his home, in the ice which made him, and be not his? How can she give herself away when she is not her own to give?

And yet she knows already that she will do it. It will be the great pretence, she thinks, and she the great pretender.

She will pretend her life away in ice bound lands with an ice bound heart.


	10. a note

Hey guys ...

I have to be honest I hadn't worked on this in ages but after a very lovely review or two I am writing more so I give you the next chapter and a promise of even more to come ...

HollowCrawlSpaceBeatingHeart s xx


	11. Howls of breath in Winterfell

The wedding party clatter towards Winterfell and Ned stands beside his son as they watch it approach. 'She is a very beautiful young woman' Ned begins but Robb holds up his palms and watches on in silence. He is in so many pieces as he watches the future Lady Stark, his Lady, rumble towards them like a thundercloud.

He knows of her beauty. He is in awe of the prestige of her parentage. He has heard much of her many qualities. He has no idea if she will make him happy. He does so desperately want to be happy. He blows a howl of steam into the cold air which envelops him.

How does a bear love? The question haunts him as the storm approaches, ever rattling on. He knows it must break. Eventually it must arrive.


	12. There is no returning now

Winterfell is a punch in the chest. The cold air bruises her lungs, rips at her cheeks, rubs her small hands warm. She is surprised to find herself smiling at it, smiling at the rough treatment. The air of Winterfell knows she deserves it. Her fathers grin is a small reward, perhaps it will not be so hard to make believe in this place beyond the fires of the sun.

Except it isn't. Because he is shining. There is no word for the colour of his hair, of that shade of burning autumn leaves which sets his face aglow in the sunset of the first day of forever. She barely sees Ned as he comes towards her to bellow affection at her father, embrace her mother, kiss her own hand. 'My dear girl' he smiles 'welcome home'. 'My lady', the russet head is bowed and his lips brush her freezing hands. There is an acre of silence, a stillness that nothing can touch as his eyes lift to hers and he smiles.

His smile is nothing like a crow's.

'My lord' she whispers into the cold air and behind her the parents who are giving away what is not theirs beam with joy as he bends his lean frame to catch her words. Then he takes her hand in his and leads her into the truth of what she is doing.

There is no returning now.


End file.
